Monday, December 15, 2008

Half Penny post: Travels, family, music

First up shoutout to musicisamust and sokari of BlackLooks. Thanks for your words of encouragement.

I did manage to get out of here for the weekend. I visited my sister in DC and made it home to OH for a friend's graduation. Like many other African students it was a struggle for her to make it to graduation so you know we had to go and dance up and down the aisles in celebration. Well we didn't want to embarass her parents so we stuck to just cheering enthusiastically.

I also got a chance to watch the Soweto Gospel Choir perform in DC .... YAY!!!!!! The show was sold out well over a week ago, but I went to the theater on the faith that I would get a ticket and I did score a $10 prime ticket. These are usually seats that are so far back you are going for the music not to see the choir dance. As luck would have it my $10 ticket was for the choral tier which means I was right above the choir and could see all the action... awesome. I swear I had a better seat than those with the $50 tickets. I got to chat with some of the choir members after the show ... nothing like using the mother tongue. I thoroughly enjoyed myself. I knew most of the songs that they sang and happily sang along. Were I in an aisle, I'd have broken out in dance too.

Every time that I fly through Philly I discover something new in the airport. There is so much art in there it's amazing. A few pieces are at the end of the post. They are by Florence Putterman.

While we are on the subject of airports allow me to recount a take or two from this weekend. First up is the tale of the plane cockpit light that mulfunctioned and had us grounded for 2 hours. We had a small sneeze-horsepower plane which means that I had to duck getting in. The plane was practically empty so we got to pick our own seats and I sat in 3 different places. Now I fell asleep after getting in and assumed I'd be woken up after we'd landed. 2 hours later I wake up, look outside the window and think the sun is mighty high and we've landed. Upon further inspection I discover we haven't left the parking spot. Yup 2 hours in the tin can by the runway. We did eventually take off and the pilot hauled ass all the way to OH.

Tale 2. We are on the plane in Philly heading back to the Chi and we get parked next to the runway for an hour. Then when we are finally cleared to leave, a plane coming in for landing has a landing gear problem so Emergency crews lined the runway and we are forced to sit again for another 15 or so mins. At this point I was certain we were entilted to free drinks or somn. Anyway take off we did at some point and the pilot hauled ass to Chi and then we spent an hour circling the city because there was too much air traffic. We finally land and get parked next to the runway again because there is too much ground traffic. We must have arrived during airport rush hour.

All the flight problems did nothing to dampen the joy of a weekend spent with friends and family. Hope you all had equally blessed weekend.